This video is sponsored by Noom.
Brew: Riding shotgun in your friend’s car, you
try to catch up on some emails and texts before
arriving at the restaurant when it happens— you’re
gripped in a wave of nausea, barely keeping it in.
You grasp around, desperate for a plastic
bag, or anything else, but it’s over.
You feel it coming.
Your mouth is full of saliva.
It’s an ailment that’s all too familiar
to many of us — motion sickness.
But how does motion sickness work?
Is there anything we can do to help feel less
like chundering every time we’re in a vehicle?
And could virtual reality be the solution
that so many of us have been looking for?
Let’s get down to motion business.
Let’s get into it!
After spending two long years finally getting
everything set up on his boat, Dudley Jackson
was excited for his new future on the waves.
He quit his job, sold his house, packed
up his family—including the dog— and
hopped onto the beautiful sailboat.
Once he left the relatively calm waters of the
New Zealand coastline however, things turned sour.
Or should I say, chunky.
Because he was seasick.
To learn that he had committed fully to a new way of
life that was completely inaccessible to him, crushed
Jackson, not to mention his whole family—and dog!
He told Newshub, “that put an end to that, I
could never go around the World or the oceans”.
So he begrudgingly returned to the landlubbing life, and got
a job in IT as an engineer, and managed to sate his appetite
for the open waves running a sail school in his off time.
But then, about a decade later, his
son showed him a virtual reality game.
Upon putting on the headset, he found himself
descending back into a pit of nausea and dizziness,
exactly like when he was on his sailboat.
He said “When my son showed me a race
car game I got sick within minutes”.
This gave him an idea, if VR could give him seasickness in a
matter of minutes, could it also reverse it just as quickly?
Jackson thought to himself, “I bet the
designers have never tried it on a boat.
I thought 'what would happen?'”.
That was his “lightbulb” moment.
But could VR tech actually improve motion sickness symptoms?
And how does motion sickness work in the first place?
To start, it’s good to know what motion sickness is.
Motion sickness, car sickness, and
sea sickness are all the same things.
They occur when your brain can’t keep track of
what your eyes, ears, and body are telling it.
Anything with lots of motion, like a plane, roller
coaster, or even a train can give you motion sickness.
That being said, even non VR video
games can give you motion sickness.
Quiz: It’s hanger management time!
Brew: Ooh, coffee flavored nutrient bars!
Thanks, Quiz.
This was a great idea.
Quiz: Especially on a day like this, we’ve
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Having little routines like this has been really helpful.
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Brew: Y’know I probably could afford to
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But I don’t think I’d be able to give up… uhm… certain habits.
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Brew: One in three people will get motion
sickness at some point in their lives.
Women and young children are the most likely to experience it.
Individuals with family histories of motion
sickness, or who are pregnant, on birth control, or
their period, in addition to those suffering from
migraines, or Parkinsons are particularly vulnerable.
Although anyone can get nauseated on bumpy car rides.
Generally, symptoms of motion sickness include cold
sweats, dizziness, fatigue, headache, pale skin,
rapid breathing, and an overproduction of saliva.
Dr. Wilhelmus J. Oosterveld, MD, PhD, writes that “Motion sickness
is a self-inflicted condition, the consequence of
man’s enormous capacity to modify his environment
and to increase his natural powers of locomotion.”
In other words, it’s a symptom of human
technology outpacing our bodies’ ability to adapt.
The human body was never meant to go much faster than
5 miles per hour (~8km/h), a human’s average land speed, so
blasting down a highway at 80mph (~128 km/h) singing along to
Bohemian Rhapsody is, from a biological standpoint,
like strapping jet engines to your 2002 Honda Civic.
You can make it work, but you’ll probably run into problems.
FYI, the fastest human being is Usain Bolt, who
managed to clock a top speed of 23 miles per hour.
Which is wack.
So what makes us feel ill when we move too quickly?
It all comes down to how your inner ears
maintain your balance, and sense movement.
Your brain figures this stuff out using what
is referred to as your vestibular system, used
to provide information to our brains on our
movement, head placement, and spatial orientation.
Basically, this system is how our brains tell which way is up
no matter what crazy yoga pretzel you’ve tied yourself up in.
While the vestibular system is composed of a
number of different organs and tracts, what’s
important for today’s video is a system of
interconnected tubes called the vestibular labyrinth.
This “labyrinth” contains three semicircular canals,
and two small structures called otolith organs.
They also contain receptors for “vestibular sensations”,
aka, feelings associated with body positioning and movement.
The most prominent part of the vestibular labyrinth
are the semicircular canals, which are three rings in
your inner ear that are angled at 90-ish degrees to
one another each along a plane that the head rotates.
In aeronautics terms, these planes are pitch, yaw, and roll.
These canals determine what angle your
head is at using a fluid called endolymph.
When your head turns, the liquid endolymph moves
through the various canals, brushing past a series
of small hairs called stereocilia which send signals
from your vestibular system to your brain, informing
it of how your head is rotated at any given moment.
When you’re standing up straight, then the
endolymph settles at the bottom of each canal.
If you carefully tilt your head without
moving in any other direction, then the
endolymph will move in only one of the canals.
The vestibular system also works in conjunction with
our ocular system, called the vestibulo-ocular system.
We talk about that in more detail in
our video on the optics of reading!
The reason you get dizzy when you spin is because
the momentum of the liquid endolymph continues
its spin well after you’ve stopped rotating.
At that point, your brain keeps receiving
messages as if you’re spinning, so your
body compensates for the perceived motion.
Motion sickness occurs when signals from your
eyes and your vestibular system conflict.
When you’re reading in the car, your inner ear senses that
you’re moving, but your eyes focus on a stationary object.
It’s the same for sea sickness, your inner ears sense
that you’re constantly moving from the motion of the
waves, but your eyes aren’t moving at the same rate,
confusing your brain which gives you an upset stomach.
Returning to our seasick sea captain Dudley Jackson
and virtual reality, he believes that motion
sickness is a serious problem facing VRtech today.
He mentions that "Designers of games now have
to put a motion sickness rating on each game”.
When you use a VR headset, you become sick the
opposite way that a boat or car would make you.
Your eyes see that you’re moving, but your inner
ear senses that you’re standing or sitting still.
Pretty much any time your inner ear and eyes send conflicting
information to the brain, you’re gonna feel nauseated.
Dudley believes that as the issue becomes more
common, technology to mitigate it should follow.
So after leveraging his expertise in IT, and his personal
research into the science of sea sickness, he decided that
VR might offer him the solace he had been looking for.
Initially using just Google Cardboard and
a smartphone app he developed himself, he
experimented as the first human participant.
Jackson told Newshub “I rowed out to my boat in the
storm with my $5 cardboard and my iPhone, I put on
my headset and within a few minutes I started to feel
some relief—that's when I knew I was on to something.
We've reversed the usage of the headset completely."
But how did Dudley Jackson manage to fix motion
sickness just using a phone and cardboard?
How can you prevent it when it happens to you?
When it comes to preventing motion sickness,
the easiest way, like most illnesses, is to
avoid the circumstances that make you sick.
“What’s the safest way to go skiing—don’t ski.”
But if you can’t completely avoid the situations
that make you sick, like when you have to work, or
go to school, there are ways to mitigate your issues.
If you travel by ship, try to book a cabin near the
front by the water level to experience the least motion.
If you choose to go by plane, a seat over the front
edge of a wing will result in the least turbulence, and
pointing the air vent toward your face will also help some.
Though, if you find yourself on a train, pick a
forward facing seat near the front, and ideally
next to a window should prevent the worst symptoms.
And lastly, if you’re going by car, try your
best to sit in the front passenger seat, or just
do what Grill does, call shotgun, then sprint
to the front seat as fast as humanly possible.
We’re not even going anywhere.
Now, if you’re unable to completely avoid the situations
that make you sick, there are techniques that you can use
in the moment to help feel at least marginally better.
The reason that the best place to sit in a car
or etc is the front is because one of the best
ways to alleviate motion sickness is to focus
on the horizon, or a distant stationary object.
This is also how Dudley Jackson’s SEE-Level headset works.
Haha clever.
The headset provides relief to seasick passengers of boats
and ships of all kinds by depositing you in a virtual
environment under a tree overlooking a peaceful lake,
giving you a strong focal point to alleviate symptoms.
The headset works differently in everyone, with some users
using it during short breaks periodically during their trip,
some use it throughout the entire journey, and some, like
Jackson, only need it once before they’re feeling ship shape.
In an email interview, when we asked Dudley Jackson
if he’s able to enjoy VR games now, he noted that “you
cannot cure seasickness or VR sickness permanently— your
body is always adjusting to what is currently presented
to it, so if you stop playing VR games or get off a
boat your body normalizes again, back to square one!”
Until VR devices are more widely available, the best
you can do is to keep your head as still as possible,
and avoid strong odors, like greasy food, or alcohol.
It’s also best not to smoke, or be near smokers.
Lastly, there are also supplements
you can take to improve your symptoms.
To the chagrin of mothers everywhere,
ginger supplements can help.
If you want something a bit more “heavy duty”, over the
counter antihistamines like benadryl, nausea medication
like Gravol or Dramamine, or prescription meds like
scopolamine can provide more long term benefits.
Dudley Jackson noted that the SEE-Level headset was tested
in trials without the use of pharmaceuticals, and has been
installed on wind farm maintenance vessels, whose crew
cannot take medications for health and safety reasons.
Jackson mentioned that the headset has
also been tested on Antarctic expeditions,
whose participants did take medications.
So if you’re not operating heavy
machinery, using medication wouldn’t hurt.
Today, Dudley Jackson has patented his SEE-Level
headset, and licences its use to cruise ships, tour
vessels, and even private yachts across the world.
In fact, the SEE-Level headset has even helped professional
mariners overcome crippling sea sickness that would otherwise
prevent them from being able to do their jobs safely.
Just ask Captain Chris Coleman, who works as
a marine pilot, guiding cargo ships into port.
Now, he can rest easy knowing that when the seas
get choppy, a quick break inside the virtual
world of SEE-Level will keep symptoms at bay.
Maybe one day all of us will have VR headsets, and the ability
to download the latest motion sickness app on the train when
we feel like we’re gonna chunder, but in the meantime, we’ll
just have to drink ginger ale, and keep our eyes forward.
But remember if you mess up someone’s
car, always ask for motion forgiveness.